Holy crap! Until I read your comment I never realised Seveneves is a palindrome.

Guess I'm one of the Lucky 10,000 today. Thank you.

As for the Hugo finalists, I hoped this wouldn't happen but am not surprised. I figured the 500+ members who voted Vox Day for Best Editor last year would be sufficient in number for the Rabid Puppies slate to do well this year despite the greater overall participation in the nomination stage.

On the positive side, a number of non-RP works are also finalists, and if nothing else, this result strengthens the support for ratifying E Pluribus Hugo.

Vox Day edits some of the material that Castalia House publishes. He's probably thus eligible, although I severely doubt he's done anything actually Hugo-worthy. There's some analysis of the impact of the Sad and Rabid recommendations at http://file770.com/?tag=sad-puppies.

The weird thing about their recommendations is that they are basically getting in line with popular taste this year instead of trying to completely take over with their rightwing fanatic material. So they ruin the best related works category with their terribleness but most of the other categories have them recommending work that would be accepted regardless or stuff that is so outside the Puppy philosophy that you have to wonder what kind of trolling they think they are doing (like haha the SJWs won't dare say mean things about the great dadaist gay erotica writer working today)

>recommending work that would be accepted regardless or stuff that >is so outside the Puppy philosophy that you have to wonder what >kind of trolling they think they are doing

Maybe they are nominating those books to take votes away votes from them (because many people do not vote for books that appear on a slate).Maybe they figured out they cannot win in those categories, so instead of trying to get what they want, they pushed ahead books that are popular and they can tolerate, silencing the one they can't tolerate.Maybe it is both: they make sure that only more "centrist" work makes it to the ballot (so the most progressive books do not even have a chance) and at the same time they erode support for those making them part of their slate, increasing the chances for their work to win.Or maybe it does not really matters to them, the important is to get people to talk about their "cause" and their publishing company.It saddens me to see people trying to game the system, tearing apart the sci-fi/fantasy fandom, and damaging the Hugos reputation.